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Walmart.com was one surprise exhibitor in 2018's NRF Retail's Big Show at New York's Javits Center.

Andria Cheng

How Walmart is duking it out against Amazon is without doubt one of the sexiest retail stories these days, and just last week, one such move from Walmart was on clear display.

As a record 37,500 attendees, including those from 3,500 retailers and 900 exhibitors, gathered for the National Retail Federation's three-day annual convention and expo in New York's Javits Center that ended Tuesday, Walmart played a surprise double role: It had an exhibition booth alongside tech giants including Microsoft, IBM and Intel that were looking to peddle their latest bells and whistles to retailers.

What was featured at the retail giant’s booth spells its ecommerce and marketplace ambition against Amazon loud and clear: Walmart.com and its portfolio of acquired brands, including Jet.com, the ModCloth clothing site for women and the Bonobos men’s apparel label. Other acquired brands featured included Moosejaw outdoor gear and Hayneedle home furnishings seller.

Staff members manning the booth weren't authorized to speak publicly but said they were there to educate and attract other retailers and brands to work with Walmart and sell on its namesake site or Jet.com, Walmart's key play to target urban millennials. (Walmart didn't respond to requests seeking additional details.)

Getting other brands, especially those considered more premium, to sell on Walmart’s ecommerce platform — and erase some of their concerns that Walmart's discount roots may cheapen those brands’ image — is crucial if Walmart wants to attract more higher-income and upscale shoppers to vie against Amazon.

Under Marc Lore, the Jet.com founder who now heads Walmart’s U.S. ecommerce operation, Walmart has expanded its online product assortment to over 70 million, from 10 million, in just two years. (That’s still far shy of Amazon’s “hundreds of millions” items for sale.) He’s also made acquired brands such as ModCloth available for sale on Jet.com.

In another move that will be closely watched by the industry and perhaps help other retailers and labels decide whether to get on board its platform, Walmart.com this spring is set to debut an online store from department store chain Lord & Taylor.

Lore has also touted Walmart’s some 4,700 U.S. stores located within 10 miles of the 90% of the U.S. population as its key competitive edge against Amazon. The company has also introduced incentives such as free two-day shipping and given discounts when shoppers choose to pick up some online orders in stores. With grocery a key jostling ground for online share, Walmart is also doubling to 2,000 the number of stores that can fulfill online grocery orders for curbside pickup.

This past holiday season, Walmart, in partnership with Google, promoted voice-assisted shopping to entice purchases ordered through Google Home devices. In another telling sign of the high-stakes online battle, Amazon's popular Echo digital voice assistants that were promoted by many other major retailers were noticeably missing in Walmart's Black Friday deals.

According to Euromonitor data, Walmart for the first time in at least six years moved up one notch to become the No. 3 online seller in the U.S. in 2017, behind only Amazon and eBay. Why? Walmart’s own U.S. online sales last year rose 53% while its third-party merchant sales more than doubled, both outpacing the 17% increase and 38% gain Amazon saw during the same period, Euromonitor data showed.

To be fair, Walmart is growing faster partly because it's growing from a much smaller share of the U.S. ecommerce market.

Walmart’s combined first-party and third-party merchant share of the U.S. online market totaled 3.6% in 2017. Amazon’s share? A combined 45.8%, according to Euromonitor.

Other studies also pointed to Walmart's online growth potential, although they paint a picture of a heated and crowded battle ground – as much as Walmart is upping its game, Amazon and other rivals aren’t sitting still either.

For instance, a Slice Intelligence study, based on digital receipts from a panel of five million U.S. online shoppers, shows that while Walmart.com’s 2017 total market share inched up nearly 0.4 percentage points to 1.79%, Amazon’s share jumped a much bigger 1.45 percentage points, to more than 38%. Meanwhile, other rivals including Best Buy and Target also picked up some share.

Walmart will have to work even faster and harder if it wants to play an even bigger part in the hot online play.

I have covered the retail industry for well over a decade and written for publications including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News. I have

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I have covered the retail industry for well over a decade and written for publications including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News. I have also been ranked as a top industry influencer since 2013. An innate curiosity about how things work and what sets one brand apart from another drives my coverage, described as “a distinct voice in a sea of noise.” I’m noted for my ability to distill scoops of insight from commodity news and create ahead-of-the-curve trend-setting pieces. Interviews with newsmakers or on-the-ground coverage of major events aren’t the only things that interest me. I’m just as eager to take in the stories of consumers. My passion in storytelling goes beyond retail. Originally from Taiwan as an ambassadorial scholar and having penned many columns about life and culture, I’m equally driven by a sense of mission to tell stories that inspire and touch hearts